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Louis CK, The 'Fat Girl' Soliloquy, And The Year's Most Brutally Honest Seven Minutes Of Television

Did you watch last night’s episode of FX’s Louie? If not, you’ll want to click on the link below. (The scene in question does come at the end of the episode, but IMHO it’s not worth worrying about the spoiler factor. But I will add a spoiler alert for the first four episodes of Season 4 of Louie) If you did, you’ll want to watch it again.

The quick setup is this. Vanessa, the smart, funny–and yes, fat–new waitress asks Louie out and he says no. She keeps asking and he keeps saying no until she finally gives him $1,200 Ranger playoff tickets with no strings attached. He breaks down and asks her to coffee. And then this…

It’s one of the most brutally honest moments of television I can recall. Sarah Baker, who plays Vanessa, starts by talking about one of those things we just don’t talk about. And she keeps right on talking.

“If you were standing over there, looking at us” she says, pointing right at us, sitting on our couches or maybe watching on our phones. “You know what you’d see?”

“What?”

“That we totally match. We’re actually a great couple together. And yet you would never date a girl like me.”

And despite his protests, we know she’s right. (In the second episode of the season, we’ve seen the living proof. In one of those television tropes–the proverbial “Perfect 10″ model, played by the freakishly beautiful Yvonne Strahovski, takes Louie home because she was amused by the way he bombed at a benefit.)

As brilliant as the speech is, and as brilliant as Baker’s performance is, what makes this work is Louie’s willingness to just stand there and take it. He makes a few lame gestures in self defense, but even if Vanessa largely refuses to judge him, we don’t. Louie is a jerk.

And Louis C.K. is a stand up guy for writing and playing a moment like that on his show.

The next episode, which also aired last night, features another moment that’s almost as brutal. In which Louie is just as big a jerk, just a different kind. It’s a moment that speaks to gender and power in our society.

For his two daughters, divorced Dad Louie has set up these elaborate and slightly anal rules about riding on the subway. It’s what parents do.

His daughter Jane does what kids do: she steps out of the subway car back onto the platform while the train, with Louie and his other daughter speeds away. We share his freak out as he runs through every horrible thing that can happen to a young girl on a subway platform. And then when he finds her, we watch as he unloads all his adult anxiety onto her. It’s not pretty, but anyone who’s had a kid–or been a kid–will recognize it as very very real.

At its most basic level, Louie is all about the distance between the lead character (Louie) and the show’s creator (Louis C.K..) This kind of tension has a long history in television comedy–Lucy, Roseanne, even Seinfeld. But unlike those shows, Louis C.K. is willing to make Louie a jerk if the result is really funny. Or it’s a way to make a big point. Like last night.

Louie CK the Comedian took a year off at the peak of his popularity to take a creative deep breath.We’ll Louie the show is back after a two-year hiatus. And if these first handful of episodes are any indication, this season should be something to see.

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Thanks for joining in, Punky. That is a complicated scene, and it does work at that level. Vanessa is quite attractive. But if you watch the whole episode, she is pretty confident in the way she flirts with him, and it doesn’t work.